Skip to main content

(Can This Be) Home

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
Four stars

It could be the warm-up to a ceilidh at the start of Kolbrun Bjort Sigfúsdóttir and Tom Oakes’ poetic meditation on what it means to build a home in the place you love, only to have the foundations of that home ripped from under you. And yes, even as the recorded accordion music plays, we’re very much talking Brexit here, as Iceland-born Sigfúsdóttir and English emigre Oakes relate in the quietest of terms how things have changed over the last three years.

Sigfusdottir does this through a series of brief monologues spoken directly to the audience. Inbetween, Oakes plays a series of traditional and original tunes picked up on his travels on bouzouki and wooden flute. Finland, Morocco and beyond are all in the mix. While Oakes plays, Sigfúsdóttir kneels on the floor, building little miniature houses out of sand and clay, before breaking them down into nothing once more, only to keep on building it into something ever stronger.

The experience may be personal, but the resonance right now is obviously much bigger, and the creative fortress Sigfúsdóttir and Oakes have built around them is a vital means of survival. It also gives the pair the strength to pool resources in a way that empowers them to both show off their talents as well as offloading their worst fears. As she talks with her hands initially clasping and unclasping in restless contemplation, Sigfúsdóttir’s quiet defiance builds into frustrated rage, until the hands come down to take on the world. This is evoked with similarly bittersweet urgency by Oakes, only without words.

In this sense, the performers lay bare an international alliance which crosses borders in a way which may or may not become increasingly difficult in the very near future. For the time being, this intimate and heartfelt sharing of private fears is an urgent real life insight into the everyday ramifications of the business of bad government, which nevertheless evolves into a fragile but essential compendium of life-affirming joy.

The Herald, March 29th 2019

Ends


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
1 comment
Read more

The Passage – Hip Rebel Degenerates: Black, White and Red All Over

Prelude – The Power of Three   Fear. Power. Love. This life-and-death (un)holy trinity was the driving force and raisons d’être of The Passage, the still largely unsung Manchester band sired in what we now call the post-punk era, and who between 1978 and 1983 released four albums and a handful of singles.    Led primarily by composer Dick Witts, The Passage bridged the divide between contemporary classical composition and electronic pop as much as between the personal and the political. In the oppositional hotbed of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide, The Passage fused agit-prop and angst, and released a song called Troops Out as a single. The song offered unequivocal support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland.    They wrote Anderton’s Hall, about Greater Manchester’s born again right wing police chief, James Anderton, and, on Dark Times, rubbed Brechtian polemic up against dancefloor hedonism. On XOYO, their most commercial and potentially mo...
Post a Comment
Read more